Former Newark Porters owner Maggie Clark passes away aged 75

A former owner of Porters shop in Newark has died after a covid infection and pulmonary embolism.

Mother-of-three Maggie Clark also set up the Beavers group in Newark, where she was district commissioner.

Maggie moved from a farm in Fife in Scotland to Yorkshire when she was 15.

She met her husband of 56 years Mike when she lived on a dairy farm and he worked as a microbiologist for the health service, but for vets practices in the evening.

Mike was called down to a dairy farm to help test cows for brucellosis, but first the family at the farm insisted he joined them for supper, which is where he met the farmer’s daughter, Maggie.

They were married when they were both 20 and went on to have three children.

The couple first moved to Boston and then, in 1980, moved to Nottinghamshire, where Mike worked for the health service.

“In 1990 I left the health service, and Maggie gave up her employment, and we bought Porters, the bacon shop and the coffee shop, and we ran those for the next ten years,” said Mike.

“Porters was a great success, Maggie took the major role in the business, and we did all sorts of strange things.

“She took two months off from the business and along with a friend bought a rather dilapidated Land Rover in Botswana and spent the next two months touring southern Africa, basically checking up on how coffee was grown in that area and how the tea plantations worked so that we could continue importing it.”

The couple sold Porters in 2001 and went on a family holiday to Greece, but unfortunately when they returned Maggie had a stroke, which left her with severe left-sided weakness.

Mike said: “This didn’t slow her down in any way shape or form once she got over the immediate thing, and then she proceeded to wander round the world with me.

“I was working as a diver at that particular time so I have memories of finding her in Indonesia poking a Komodo Dragon with a stick, which kind of surprised me.

“She also went out into the Indian Ocean on a Chinese junk, she couldn’t swim so we put a buoyancy aid on her and she spent the next hour swimming around with a shoal of mater rays bouncing from one to another, which she thought was great fun.”

In addition to the business and community work, Maggie was also a middle distance runner and helped with Little Fishes, a children’s group.

After her stroke she was greatly helped by the North Kesteven Riding For The Disabled Association at Hough on the Hill.